1865. CHAP. VI. message, stating that the enemy refused any terms except those the conqueror may grant; and then arranged as vigorous an effort as the circumstances permitted, once more to "fire the Southern heart." A public meeting was called, and on the evening of February 6, Jefferson Davis and others made speeches at the African Church,' which, judging from the meager reports that were printed, were as denunciatory and bellicose as the bitterest Confederate could have wished. Davis, particularly, is represented to have excelled himself in defiant heroics. "Sooner than we should ever be united again,” he said, "he would be willing to yield up everything he had on earth if it were possible he would sacrifice a thousand lives"; and further announced his confidence that they would yet "compel the Yankees, in less than twelve "Richmond months, to petition us for peace on our own Feb. 7, 1865. terms." He denounced President Lincoln as "His Dispatch," 1 This meeting at the African Church was supplemented, a few days later, by a grand concerted effort at public speech-making at different places in Richmond, intended to electrify the South. Pollard, the Southern historian, thus describes it: "All business was suspended in Richmond; at high noon processions were formed to the different places of meeting; and no less than twenty different orators, composed of the most effective speakers in Congress and the cabinet, and the most eloquent divines of Richmond, took their stands in the halls of legislation, in the churches and the theaters, and swelled the eloquence of this last grand appeal to the people and armies of the South. It was an extraordinary day in Richmond; vast crowds huddled around the stands of the speakers or lined the streets; and the air was vocal with the efforts of the orator and the responses of his audience. It appeared indeed that the blood of the people had again been kindled. But it was only the sickly glare of an expiring flame; there was no steadiness in the excitement; there was no virtue in huzzas; the inspiration ended with the voices and ceremonies that invoked it; and it was found that the spirit of the people of the Confederacy was too weak, too much broken, to react with effect or assume the position of erect and desperate defiance."-Pollard, "The Lost Cause," pp. 684, 685. Majesty Abraham the First," and said "before the CHAP. VI. campaign was over he and Seward might find 'they had been speaking to their masters.'" This extravagant rhetoric would seem merely grotesque were it not embittered by the reflection that it was the signal which carried many additional thousands of brave soldiers to bloody graves in continuing a palpably hopeless military struggle. Jones, p. 411. CHAPTER VII THE SECOND INAUGURAL CHAP. VII. Feb., 1865. WE E have seen what effect the Hampton Roads Conference produced upon Jefferson Davis, and to what intemperate and wrathful utterance it provoked him. Its effect upon President Lincoln was almost directly the reverse. His interview with the rebel commissioners doubtless strengthened his former convictions that the rebellion was waning in enthusiasm and resources, and that the Union cause must triumph at no distant day. Secure in his renewal of four years' personal leadership, and hopefully inspirited by every sign of early victory in the war, his only thought was to shorten, by generous conciliation, the period of the dreadful conflict. His temper was not one of exultation, but of broad, patriotic charity, and of keen, sensitive personal sympathy for the whole country and all its people, South as well as North. His conversation with Stephens, Hunter, and Campbell had probably revealed to him glimpses of the undercurrent of their anxiety that fraternal bloodshed and the destructive ravages of war might somehow come to an end. To every word or tone freighted with this feeling, the magnanimous and tender heart of Presi dent Lincoln sincerely responded. As a ruler and CHAP. VII. a statesman, he was clear in his judgment and inflexible in his will to reëstablish union and maintain freedom for all who had gained it by the chances of war; but also as a statesman and a ruler, he was ready to lend his individual influence and his official discretion to any measure of mitigation and manifestation of good-will that, without imperiling the union of the States, or the liberty of the citizen, might promote acquiescence in impending political changes, and abatement and reconcilement of hostile sectional feelings. Filled with such thoughts and purposes, he spent the day after his return from Hampton Roads in considering and perfecting a new proposal, designed as a peace-offering to the States in rebellion. On the evening of February 5, 1865, he called his Cabinet together and read to them the following draft of a message and proclamation, which he had written during the day, and upon which he invited their opinion and advice: Fellow-citizens of the Senate and House of Representatives: I respectfully recommend that a joint resolution, substantially as follows, be adopted, so soon as practi- Feb. 5, 1865. cable, by your honorable bodies: "Resolved by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America in Congress assembled, That the President of the United States is hereby empowered, in his discretion, to pay four hundred millions of dollars to the States of Alabama, Arkansas, Delaware, Florida, Georgia, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maryland, Mississippi, Missouri, North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, Virginia, and West Virginia, in the manner and on the conditions following, to wit: The payment to be made in six per cent. Government bonds, and to be distributed among said States pro rata on their respective slave populations as F CHAP. VII. MS. shown by the census of 1860, and no part of said sum to be paid unless all resistance to the National authority shall be abandoned and cease, on or before the first day of April next; and upon such abandonment and ceasing of resistance one-half of said sum to be paid, in manner aforesaid, and the remaining half to be paid only upon the amendment of the National Constitution recently proposed by Congress becoming valid law, on or before the first day of July next, by the action thereon of the requisite number of States." The adoption of such resolution is sought with a view to embody it, with other propositions, in a proclamation looking to peace and reunion. Whereas, a joint resolution has been adopted by Congress, in the words following, to wit: Now therefore I, Abraham Lincoln, President of the United States, do proclaim, declare, and make known, that on the conditions therein stated, the power conferred on the Executive in and by said joint resolution will be fully exercised; that war will cease and armies be reduced to a basis of peace; that all political offenses will be pardoned; that all property, except slaves, liable to confiscation or forfeiture, will be released therefrom, except in cases of intervening interests of third parties; and that liberality will be recommended to Congress upon all points not lying within Executive control. It may be said with truth that this was going to Feb., 1864. the extreme of magnanimity toward a foe already in the throes and helplessness of overwhelming defeat a foe that had rebelled without adequate cause and was maintaining the contest without reasonable hope. But Mr. Lincoln remembered that the rebels, notwithstanding all their offenses and errors, were yet American citizens, members of the same nation, brothers of the same blood. He remembered, too, that the object of the war, equally with peace and freedom, was the maintenance of one government and the perpetuation of one |